Driving should be a tool, not a pastime
Iwas picking up some last-minute groceries for Shabbos last Thursday night when a minivan, stuffed to the gills with high-school girls, the latest Ishay Ribo song blaring, pulled into the parking space in front of me. One girl popped out of the front seat and ran into the takeout store, undoubtedly to pick up the Thursday night cholent that she and her friends would enjoy together over the center console of someone’s mother’s car.
As a mechaneches of a prestigious school in a very frum neighborhood, it’s a scene I can’t wrap my head around. My 11th- and 12th-grade students come home after a full day of school, only to drop their bags, untuck their shirts, and run back out with the car keys to pick up their friends and go for a drive. Their mothers won’t see them again until the next morning, having retired for the night long before they get back home.
I know this has become the norm that our girls get a driver’s license at 16, and then, the world is theirs for the taking.
The sheer need to always be on the move, to go go go, to never be home, to be out on the town at all hours — it’s not healthy. What is this frenetic yearning to be out, driving fast, music loud, conversation even louder?
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